Luke Cage's Mike Colter Has to Eat So Much Food to Become a Superhero

Every actor who plays a superhero has at some point exhaustedly listed the punishing diet and workout plan they have to stick to in order to achieve and maintain superhero shape. It's not easy to look like a comic book character, and one of the biggest sacrifices that has to be made is food. If you want to be a superhero, you have to give up the idea that food is something to be enjoyed, and instead think of it as a maintenance chore. If you want to have clean dishes every day, you have to wash them, and if you want to have six-pack abs that pop off the screen, you have to eat so much chicken breast.

Mike Colter, who plays Luke Cage on the eponymous Netflix series and the upcoming Marvel team-up The Defenders, is no exception. He broke down his daily routine for TVGuide.com on the MTV Movie and TV Awards red carpet on Sunday.

Are you ready? Here goes:

"Get up in the morning, have a protein shake, some eggs, cottage cheese, pineapple, about an hour later I have a sweet potato, then a chicken breast, then probably after that work out, have a recovery drink after that, couple hard-boiled eggs, wait a little while, have a salad, some quinoa, some more chicken breast or sweet potato, wait a little while, have a little bit of sushi maybe, wait a little while, and then I'm starting probably with my meal, any meal, which could be any number of things. I try and mix it up. I get bored with myself. But basically I gotta get 3000-5000 calories in there. At least 3500. No cookies, unless it's those protein vegan cookies. Those are pretty good."

Got all that? Eat that and put on 35 pounds of muscle and maybe you could be a superhero. Or maybe the real superhero is the person who can eat like that without going on a killing spree.

The Defenders arrives on Netlix August 18.

Reporting by Malcolm Venable.